Guide wires are used during various interventional medical procedures to navigate therapeutic devices to a treatment site within a body, such as within a bone for reducing a fracture in the bone. Accordingly, guide wires may be advanced into the canal of a broken long bone to align the bone fragments before reducing the bone fracture. The guide wires have a small diameter and in order to be able to advance them, some kind of handle is used to grip the guide wire and apply the necessary force for the advancement. The exterior of the guide wire is smooth and the instrument for the advancement may not leave marks on the exterior that damage the guide wire nor may the forces applied thereby result in that the guide wire is bent in any way.
Several types of guide wire control devices for advancing a guide wire are already known in the prior art. The purpose of a guide wire control device is to provide sufficient clamping force on the smooth exterior surface of the guide wire to be able to advance the guide wire. This is normally done by means of a press fit which generates sufficient friction to avoid slipping of the guide wire. To this end, a so called Jacob's chuck may be used. The Jacob's chuck is also known from drilling machines where it basically has the same function. Typically, three clamping jaws are tightened via a cone and thread mechanism. The clamping jaws are pressed together when a ring or nut is rotated. Another type is a collet chuck. The collet chuck is also pressed together onto the exterior of the guide wire via a cone, thereby generating a friction force. Both these prior art solutions have the drawback that they need to be tightened and untightened in order to generate the force for clamping the guide wire. This is a time-consuming procedure. Particularly in long bone nailing, the guide wires are long and must be gripped several times before they are fully inserted into the bone. Because of their length and small diameter, they cannot be gripped only at their ends. Doing so, will lead to kinking of the guide wire. Another drawback is that the guide wires slip easy because they are clamped at a large surface area. The intended use of the guide wires results in that they are often covered with blood and fat. These substances make it difficult for the chucks to transmit the necessary force. Also, the prior art instruments are difficult to disassemble for cleaning.